Image to ASCII Art Converter
How to turn an image into ASCII art
- Click the box above or drop a photo onto it.
- Set the width in characters and pick a character set. Wider art keeps more detail; narrower art fits in a chat message or a code comment.
- Adjust brightness, contrast and gamma until the shapes read clearly, and turn on edges, dithering or color if you want them.
- Copy the text, or download it as a TXT file, a PNG image or an HTML page.
Frequently asked questions
How does it work?
The photo is divided into a grid with one cell per character, each cell the shape of a character. The brightness of each cell picks a character whose amount of ink matches it: dense ones like @ and # for dark areas, sparse ones like . and : for light areas, and a space for the lightest. The ink of every character is measured in your font, so the shading is even.
What do the edges do?
They find the outlines in the photo and draw them with the characters that look like lines: | for upright edges, - for flat ones, and / and \ for slanted ones. That makes faces, buildings and logos look drawn rather than only shaded. Some marks the strongest 10% of cells as edges, Many the strongest 20%.
When should I use dithering?
With a short character set such as Simple or Blocks. Each cell is rounded to the nearest character and the rounding error is passed on to the neighboring cells, so smooth gradients like a sky come out as a mix of characters instead of hard bands.
Why does my ASCII art look stretched in another app?
ASCII art needs a monospaced font, where every character is the same width, such as Courier, Consolas or Menlo, with no extra line spacing. In a proportional font the columns no longer line up. In Discord, Slack and GitHub, put the art in a code block between three backticks.
Why does the photo come out muddy?
Photos with little difference between light and dark areas give a flat result, since only a few characters get used. Keep Stretch contrast on, raise the contrast, and move the gamma until the subject stands out. A plain background behind the subject helps most.
Is it only ASCII?
The Detailed and Simple sets, and the edges, use only printable ASCII characters, which work everywhere. Blocks uses the Unicode shading characters, which give smoother tones but need a font that has them.
What does Color do?
Each character keeps the color of its part of the photo. It shows on the page and in the PNG and HTML downloads. Plain text has no color, so the copied text and the TXT file stay plain ASCII.
Is my image uploaded?
No. Everything happens inside your browser, so your files never leave your device and nothing is stored on a server.